Booknotes: Confederate Privateer

New Arrival:

• Confederate Privateer: The Life of John Yates Beall by William C. Harris (LSU Press, 2023).

Appropriately enough, given the great disparities in scale and significance between them, the vast bulk of the Civil War literature associated with the irregular war is devoted to land fighting. However, there were certainly a number of daring individuals primarily associated with irregular waterborne activities who achieved some notoriety during the conflict. One of those persons is John Yates Beall.

In yet another odd coincidence of a sudden appearance of two new books covering the same previously neglected topic, a pair of Beall-related studies were published during this current catalog season. I haven't had the chance to read either yet (and this one arrived just a few days ago), but it appears that Harris's book is more traditional biography while Ralph Lindeman's study is more focused on operations. I could be wrong, that's just my initial impression.

William Harris's Confederate Privateer "is a comprehensive account of the brief life and exploits of John Yates Beall, a Confederate soldier, naval officer, and guerrilla in the Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes region. A resident of Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), near Harpers Ferry, Beall was a member of the militia guarding the site of John Brown’s execution in 1859. Beall later signed on as a private in the Confederate army and suffered a wound in defense of Harpers Ferry early in the war. He quickly became a fanatical Confederate, ignoring the issue of slavery by focusing on a belief that he was fighting to preserve liberty against a tyrannical Republican party that had usurped the republic and its constitution."

While today's readers more widely associate Beall with the Great Lakes region, he cut his nautical guerrilla teeth in the East. More from the description: "Limited by poor health but still seeking an active role in the Confederate cause, Beall traveled to the Midwest and then to Canada, where he developed an elaborate plan for Confederate operations on the Great Lakes. In Richmond, Beall laid his plan before Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory. Instead of the Great Lakes operation, Mallory authorized a small privateering action on the Chesapeake Bay. Led by “Captain” Beall, the operation damaged or destroyed several ships under the protection of the U.S. Navy. For his part in organizing the raids, Beall became known as the “Terror of the Chesapeake.”"

As the war itself intensified, and the scale and aspirations of irregular activities expanded along with it, punishments meted out to captured clandestine agents and guerrilla raiders became correspondingly harsh. Caught up in that evolution, and not surviving it, was Beall. More: "After Union forces captured Beall and his men, the War Department prepared to try them as pirates. But Secretary of War Edwin Stanton backed down, and Beall was later freed in a prisoner exchange. Organizing another privateering operation on the Great Lakes, Beall had some early successes on the water. He then hatched a plan to derail a passenger train transporting Confederate prisoners of war near Niagara, New York, but was captured before he could carry out the mission. The Union army charged Beall with conspiracy, found him guilty, and executed him."

"Based on exhaustive research in primary and secondary sources and placed in the context of more extensive Confederate guerrilla operations,"...Harris's Confederate Privateer "offers a new view of paramilitary efforts by civilians to support the Confederacy."